Our Right to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness

Updated: Dec 21, 2018

People institute governments to secure their rights. If we have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, then we need to secure that right by making sure that everyone has what they need to live so they are at liberty to pursue happiness. The only thing that makes people genuinely happy is fulfilling their life purpose, and that purpose is most often something that serves the common good or would make the world a better place. So if we gave everyone what they need to live, they would do the things that promote the common good and make the world a better place.

How could we make sure everyone has what they need to live? One thing that would help is to ask if we have a right to an equitable share in the overall productivity of the economy? In other words, should the increase in wealth generated by the economy go to the already super wealthy as it does now, or should it be distributed equitably to everyone? And we might also ask if we have a right to the capital our capacities warrant? If your sense of justice says that we do have a right to an equitable share in the overall productivity of the economy and a right to the capital our capacities warrant, then it is obvious that implementing those rights could only be done by issuing or allocating money to the people so that they have the money they need to live and can access the capital they need to implement their life purpose, which would make the world a better place.

In the current system it is obvious that the various legislatures allocate tax revenue or borrow to accomplish what the Legislatures agree is necessary. But, because the Banking system is issuing the dollar as a debt to itself (see the essay on Banking here) there is never enough money to do all the things that we would all agree would be good. If we, the people, issued the right amount of money to accurately represent the value of all the goods and services we make available to each other in the economy, we could make sure that there is no scarcity of money, or surplus of money. If we issued the right amount of money to the people directly, so they can buy the goods and services, then every one would have the money they need to live, and would be at liberty to do the things they see are necessary to make their community a wonderful place to live.

In order to wrap ones head around this seemingly pie in the sky idea one needs to ask what motivates us as human beings. This is the crux of the matter, because if we can trust that our fellow human beings are similarly motivated to put their lives in service of their community, and to do what they love to do, autonomously (the way they want to do it) and with the opportunity to develop their capacity to do it increasingly well, then we really can trust that removing the need to "earn" your living and replacing it with the "right" to your living, would make the world an increasingly wonderful place to live.